Make The Smart Choice
by Riolu16
Summary: Damian was just your average college student. However, one day he sees a strange figure on his campus and as he struggles to find what this figure is, he receives threatening messages telling him to MAKE THE SMART CHOICE by not telling anyone he has seen. As Damian discovers Darkrai is behind this, his life is changed forever as he is turned into a Riolu.


Chapter I: The Illusion

The day was like every other. Well, during the week days anyway. I sighed as I sat behind the wooden desk shifting my body around in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy school, I just didn't care for this class. American Government definitely was not my forte, and every lecture was more torturous than the last. All I ever did in class was listen to my instructor Mr. Masucci as he ranted on about whatever and pray to God that he wouldn't ask me a question pertaining to the lesson.

I got decent grades in the class, but only because I had to take enormous amounts of my time to stop by the academic resource center, a building on the college campus to receive tutoring or have an English major grade your essay, for tutoring.

"Damian?" Mr. Masucci called.

I swore mentally, dreading the fact that all eyes were now on me.

"What are companies that control large sources of our media?" he asked.

I thought for a moment, feeling smaller and smaller the longer I thought about the answer. IN my mind, all I could do was repeat his question.

"Need some help?" he asked me.

"No… Umm… It's media…. Is it a media conglomerate?" I staggered.

"Are you asking me or are you telling me, Damian?" he said jokingly.

I simply shrugged, slumped back in my chair and replied, "It's a media conglomerate."

He gave that look that meant you had a 50/50 chance that you got the question right or not. It always made me nervous when he did that.

Finally, he exclaimed, "Exactly! A media conglomerate controls the news, what you hear about debates, and even if one presidential candidate I just uglier than the other."

I simply sat through the rest of the lecture, and as he announced it was over, I made my way out the door, as did the many other classmates.

My school wasn't luxurious, it was cheap if anything, compared to the second campus that was two county's from me.

I held onto my backpack with one hand and took a second to look at my watch. It was 3:47 PM, so my next class wasn't for another 2 hours. I had time to kill, as usual. I took a seat at the round stone tables alone, looking at the 3 sand hill cranes walking around casually in the grass beside me. I opened my laptop, typed in my password, and waited impatiently as the word "Welcome" appeared and buffering wheel to the right continuously spun. As my laptop started up, I opened FL studio, and continued working on my music. I couldn't find my headphones at the moment, but I didn't need them to hear what my music sounded like.

I was halfway through my electro house song I had whipped up until I became distracted by the sand hill cranes screeching. I tried to ignore it, but they only seemed to get louder as the time went by. When I couldn't take it anymore, I saved my work, shut my laptop, and swore under my breath.

My line of sight was now on the three birds, which seemed to be acting strangely. Each of them stood erect, their wings expanded, and the screeching endless. But their heads never looked away from the small forest near the school. It was as though they afraid of something in that direction. I decided to check it out.

Leering off into the distance, I couldn't see anything that could be a source of danger. I stood up and walked into the light, finally noticing an odd figure in the distance. Was I hallucinating? Is the intense heat making an illusion? I wasn't sure, but whatever it was, it didn't seem real.

In the forest, I could see an ominous black figure in the form of a smoke cloud. Its eyes looking into my own. I removed my phone from my pocket, not taking my eyes off the figure for a second. I took multiple snapshots of whatever it was, and in mere seconds after my pictures, the figure faded away, and the cranes immediately calmed down.

I sat back down and inspected the pictures closely, zooming in on the figure with two fingers. I didn't know what to think of it, but the more I stared at it, the more awe struck I became.

"What the hell?" I muttered.

I began to wonder if it was some kind of prank being pulled on the students, but then again, maybe it wasn't. The "thing" was interesting. It was in the shape of a black pollution cloud, but around its neck was a bright red cloud, almost like a scarf. It's only feature standing out most to me were its eyes. Two empty, lifeless eyes were visible and staring directly at the camera. Inspecting even closer, the cloud thing appeared to have arms.

_Maybe it's a ghost?_

I didn't know, but it definitely had me questioning what it was. The cranes were now quiet, which meant I could get back to work. But first, I had some Googling to do. I opened my laptop again, and quickly started the search engine. Google already being my homepage, I typed in details of the figure.

_Black smoke ghost red white eyes_

I pressed enter and in a split second, all of the results came up. First I looked at images, and after scrolling through nearly every picture, I came up with nothing relevant to what I looked up. I went back into the regular search and found myself empty handed as I went through 7 pages of results. I licked my lips, typing a bit more into the search engine.

_Black smoke ghost red white eyes Florida animals going crazy_

Knowing the internet, chances were that I wasn't going to find anything better typing that in. But I was wrong. The third result on the first page was a forum that had the title, "My dogs bark, black smoke thing in my backyard".

I instantly clicked on the link and read the guys tale.

Hi, this may sound crazy but I don't know what else to do at this point other than ask someone online. A couple weeks ago my dogs were barking for no reason. I thought they were barking at my neighbor's dog but I was wrong. I went out one day and saw they were looking at something when they barked. I have three dogs by the way, and they usually never bark unless someone is at the door. I let them outside into the backyard and they looked at something in my backyard. I looked at it and I can't really describe it. It looked like a grey smoke thing with arms and eyes. This may sound crazy, and I don't believe in ghosts but I thought it could've been a ghost. My dog's barked every day at it and eventually, my 7 year old daughter told me about nightmares, and in her dream she said someone named Dark Rye or something like that would be mean to her in her dreams. Is this a haunting or something? Please someone tell me if you know anything about this. This is really strange and it has been happening for almost 3 weeks now and I'm worried about my daughter. Does anyone know I this a ghost or not?

And the article ended there. I read the comments, and most of them were either the usual smartass making dumb replies or people saying that this is probably the result of a disability. The guy had his e-mail address posted on the page, and I decided to take advantage of this. I copied his e-mail address and pasted it into my e-mail client. I took a second to think of what to write.

"Hmm…" I titled the subject, _The Smoke Creature in Your Backyard_

Hello Greg, my name is Damian and I wanted to e-mail you about the cloud thing you wrote about in a forum a couple of weeks ago. I looked up online and found your story. My reason for e-mailing you is because I want you to see a picture and see if it's the thing you saw. I think whatever you saw is what I saw too. If it is, please reply to me and—

I stopped typing as I noticed an e-mail notification pop up on the screen. I saved my message as a draft and went to my inbox. My jaw dropped as I saw the senders e-mail address. It was from the guy John.

"What the hell…?"

The subject read, "If you were smart…"

I opened the message and felt a blanket of complete fear and anxiety cover me. In all caps, the message read…

DAMIAN, IF YOU WERE SMART YOU WOULD DELETE THAT PICTURE. UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO CHANGE FOREVER I SUGGEST YOU FORGET WHAT YOU SAW AT THE SCHOOL TODAY. DON'T TELL ANYONE. MAKE THE SMART CHOICE, I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. AND TRUST ME WHEN I SAY, YOU WILL NOT BE HAPPY UNLESS YOU DO AS I SAY. YOUR PARENTS LOVE YOU VERY MUCH AND SO DO YOUR BROTHERS. YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO LOSE YOUR LIFE WITH THEM WOULD YOU? I WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL. MAKE THE SMART CHOICE, DAMIAN. YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO MAKE THE RIGHT MOVE. DON'T BE AN IDIOT.

My entire body became enveloped in goose bumps. I was sweating from the intense fear.

"Holy crap… Oh my God…" I muttered between deep breaths.

I sent a reply message.

Who are you? What do you want from me?

Before I could click send, I got another e-mail from the same guy.

I AM EVERY OUNCE OF FEAR YOU'RE FEELING RIGHT NOW. WHAT I WANT FROM YOU IS TO MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE. I'M WATCHING YOU, DAMIAN.

_How does he know my name?_

Another message appeared in my inbox, the subject being an endless amount of random characters not even available on a computer keyboard.

I KNOW EVERYONE. YOU'RE A SMART KID DAMIAN. PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME DO WHAT I'VE HAD TO DO TO THE OTHERS. IF SOMEONE KNOWS ABOUT ME OTHER THAN YOU, I WILL KNOW. I'M WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE. IF YOU MAKE THE WRONG CHOICE, I WILL STOP YOU IN YOUR TRACKS AND YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES.

Knowing he was going to reply before I could finish typing, I wrote into the reply box…

What's going to happen if I do—

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DON'T IS A BETTER QUESTION, DAMIAN. I'M DONE SPEAKING TO YOU. DON'T BE AN IDIOT, I KNOW HOW SMART YOU ARE. YOU'RE A GRADE A STUDENT, AND I KNOW YOU WOULDN'T WANT THAT TO GO TO WASTE NOW. GOOD BYE, AND GOOD LUCK.

I closed my laptop, shaking intensely. This was a strange sensation I was feeling. My throat felt dry, my body was shaking, and I was sweating all over. I was scared. Not just scared, but terrified. That figure wasn't a something, but more or less a someone. And whoever it was, they were threatening me and even my family. Maybe it was just a prank, maybe it was something supernatural. Maybe it wasn't real? Maybe I'm dreaming? I pinched myself. Nope, definitely not dreaming.

I decided immediately what I was going to do. Chances were that this was a guy online pranking me, and possibly even a hacker in my computer. I've been hacked on social media sites before, so I'm familiar with this kind of thing.

It was then that I decided to meet my English professor in her office and make a lie to get out of class. I knocked on the door and said, "Mrs. C?"

"Ohh, hi. Can I help you?" she asked as she sat behind her large desk in a leather office chair.

I scratched the back of my neck. I faked a sad monotone as I spoke.

"Umm… I just got a text and… my brother got into a car accident."

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she said sympathetically.

"No, it's not your fault umm… I'm not gonna make it to class today. I gotta go right now to the wreckage. See if he's okay."

"Alright then, I won't mark you absent today. You won't be missing much anyways, just more on MLA formatting."

I folded my hands together and said, "Thank you so much Mrs. C. I really appreciate it."

She grinned at me, "I hope your brother makes it out okay."

"Yeah, me too. I gotta go now."

"Good luck Damian. Make the smart choice."

My eyes widened, my fear rising once again, "Yeah… I will…"

I left her office, rushed to the parking lot and hurried to my car. Not to act out my story, but because I felt I was being watched.

_That was really weird. _My inner voice told me as I started the ignition of my car. I made my way to the police station, hoping to God I was making the right choice.


End file.
